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Vortex Constellation

Being brought up in the surrounding of people accustomed to thinking that they were born to serve the place they call "homeland". I had some specific ideas about that and starved to break this “tradition”, trying to leave the land where I was born.  With all due respect to my roots, homeland, local and national art and craft, I thought that I belong to myself. I felt like being a part of all humanity, and not of a country or an area or community.  On travelling, I felt that I learn about the World and life simply by breathing the air, watching people and learning languages. 

I could not imagine any other way of living until I got married (ten years ago) and gave birth (seven years back). Responsibilities and volume or work raised, the needs changed and, in a way, material resources became as limited, as the places I was lucky to visit during these ten years: monumental Russian the cities, towns and small unknown villages I have been to within these ten years. There live or lived people I call friends or relatives.  In some places, I spent most of my childhood. Their streets, parks, riverbanks are stored in my memory like photographs in an album.  By some coincidence, these places (even being far from each other) "encircle" my native town - Kursk.  Such “limits” of attachment to one city, for someone, may seem normal, traditional, though I feel it sometimes like being in a sort of "vortex" that does not give a chance to escape even if you commit many efforts. 

My unwilling belonging to a certain place one day became depressive. It caused many episodes of emotional complications until I find a solution to cope with it and transform it for good. The limits gave me the push to become more inventive in finding ways and resources for learning, self-improvement and distance education.

I reappraised many things about my surroundings and, I found my true values. I started to perceive my “homeland vortex” as a trial. I understood that it gives me the resource which I did not value before - time. The time needed to gain strength and experience before committing a new step. The "dots" swirling in and around the vortex were perceived not the geographical names and places anymore.  They made a "constellation".  Today the constellation symbolises people and personal revelations, a newly discovered (illusionary) "harmony".  They are the landmarks that make my past and present.

I have learned to respect and love this. And I believe, one day to allow myself to leave this place. I wish to make the way other discoveries, places, people, knowings, impressions.  But without a doubt, Vortex Constellation takes a special place in my heart.